Section 45

45. From this discussion it becomes perfectly clear that the
individual member of the All contributes to that All in the degree
of its kind and condition; thus it acts and is acted upon. In any
particular animal each of the limbs and organs, in the measure of
its kind and purpose, aids the entire being by service performed and
counts in rank and utility: it gives what is in it its gift and
takes from its fellows in the degree of receptive power belonging to
its kind; there is something like a common sensitiveness linking the
parts, and in the orders in which each of the parts is also animate,
each will have, in addition to its rank as part, the very particular
functions of a living being.

We have learned, further, something of our human
standing; we know
that we too accomplish within the All a work not confined to the
activity and receptivity of body in relation to body; we know that
we bring to it that higher nature of ours, linked as we are by
affinities within us towards the answering affinities outside us;
becoming by our soul and the conditions of our kind thus linked- or,
better, being linked by Nature- with our next highest in the
celestial
or demonic realm, and thence onwards with those above the
Celestials, we cannot fail to manifest our quality. Still, we are
not all able to offer the same gifts or to accept identically: if we
do not possess good, we cannot bestow it; nor can we ever purvey any
good thing to one that has no power of receiving good. Anyone that
adds his evil to the total of things is known for what he is and, in
accordance with his kind, is pressed down into the evil which he has
made his own, and hence, upon death, goes to whatever region fits
his quality- and all this happens under the pull of natural forces.

For the good man, the giving and the taking and the changes of
state go quite the other way; the particular tendencies of
the nature,
we may put it, transpose the cords [so that we are moved by that
only which, in Plato's metaphor of the puppets, draws towards the
best].

Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom,
everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a
law which
none may elude- which the base man never conceives though it is
leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot
must be cast- which the just man knows, and, knowing, sets out to
the place he must, understanding, even as he begins the
journey, where
he is to be housed at the end, and having the good hope that he will
be with gods.

In a living being of small scope the parts vary but slightly,
and have but a faint individual consciousness, and, unless
possibly in
a few and for a short time, are not themselves alive. But in a
living universe, of high expanse, where every entity has vast scope
and many of the members have life, there must be wider movement and
greater changes. We see the sun and the moon and the other stars
shifting place and course in an ordered progression. It is therefore
within reason that the souls, also, of the All should have their
changes, not retaining unbrokenly the same quality, but
ranged in some
analogy with their action and experience- some taking rank
as head and
some as foot in a disposition consonant with the Universal
Being which
has its degrees in better and less good. A soul, which
neither chooses
the highest that is here, nor has lent itself to the lowest, is one
which has abandoned another, a purer, place, taking this sphere in
free election.

The punishments of wrong-doing are like the treatment of
diseased parts of the body- here, medicines to knit sundered flesh;
there, amputations; elsewhere, change of environment and condition-
and the penalties are planned to bring health to the All by settling
every member in the fitting place: and this health of the
All requires
that one man be made over anew and another, sick here, be taken
hence to where he shall be weakly no longer.